An increasing number of wireless devices such as smart phones, laptops, netbooks, etc. are expected to support multiple types of wireless protocols in their communications. Examples are wide-area protocols such as WiMAX or LTE, local-area protocols such as WiFI, and personal-area protocols such as Bluetooth. Much effort has gone into making it possible for a first device to communicate with a second device using the best available protocol out of multiple possible protocols. And some devices are able to communicate with two different devices, using a different protocol for each one. Typically, each protocol is chosen based on which network the other device is in, since a given network typically uses a single protocol for all communications. But having multi-protocol capability in each of two conventional devices does little to improve any one specific communication between those two devices in a conventional network.